1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a backlight assembly, a liquid crystal display (“LCD”) apparatus having the backlight assembly and a method of manufacturing a lamp-fixing member. More particularly, the present invention relates to a backlight assembly having a lamp-fixing member which prevents a diffusion plate from moving to improve display quality, an LCD apparatus having the backlight assembly and a method of manufacturing the lamp-fixing member.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, a liquid crystal display (“LCD”) apparatus displays an image using liquid crystals. The LCD apparatus is a flat panel display apparatus. The LCD apparatus has various merits compared to other display devices, such as thin thickness, low driving voltage and low power consumption, for example, but is not limited to the foregoing. Therefore, the LCD apparatus has been widely used in various fields.
The LCD apparatus is a non-emissive type display apparatus. Therefore, the LCD apparatus requires a backlight assembly to supply an LCD panel with light.
The backlight assembly includes at least one lamp which generates light. For example, a plurality of cold cathode fluorescent lamps (“CCFL”) having a long cylindrical shape may be employed by the backlight assembly as the lamps. According to the position of the at least one lamp, the backlight assembly is classified as either an edge illumination type backlight assembly or a direct illumination type backlight assembly.
In the case of the edge illumination type backlight assembly, one or two lamps are disposed adjacent to the side edge surface of a transparent light-guide plate. The edge illumination type backlight assembly produces multiple reflections of the light using one surface of the light-guide plate, and emits the light to the LCD panel. In the case of the direct illumination type backlight assembly, a plurality of the lamps is disposed under the LCD panel, a diffusion plate is disposed over the lamps, and a reflective plate is disposed under the lamps, so that the direct illumination type backlight assembly respectively diffuses and reflects the light emitted from the lamps. Therefore, the edge illumination type backlight assembly is used for a relatively small-screen LCD apparatus, such as a notebook computer, a monitor, etc. On the other hand, the direct illumination type backlight assembly is used for a large-screen LCD apparatus with high luminance.
In the case of the direct illumination type backlight assembly for use in the large-screen LCD apparatus, a length of the lamps and a size of the diffusion plate are increased. Therefore, the backlight assembly includes a lamp-fixing member which fixes the lamp and supports the diffusion plate.
More specifically, the lamp-fixing member includes a lamp-fixing portion to fix the lamp and a diffusion plate supporting portion to support the diffusion plate. However, when the diffusion plate freely moves due to vibration of the LCD apparatus, the vibration causes rubbing between the diffusion plate and the diffusion plate supporting portion. The rubbing results in rubbed regions on the diffusion plate, thus deteriorating a display quality of the LCD apparatus.